Peter Townsend, disability, Fabianism and self‐organisation – an enduring difficulty. An obituary

The death in June 2009 of the British sociologist Peter Townsend prompted a powerful outpouring of support for him and his public contribution, in both mainstream media obituaries and subsequent correspondence (Clark 2009; Busfield et al. 2009, Walker 2009a, 2009b). Here was a social scientist and professor who was also feted as a ‘radical and campaigner’ (Walker 2009a). While much attention was focused on Townsend’s academic contribution in the field of poverty and his broader campaigning role as co‐founder of the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG), there was also mention of his important role in the field of disability. The Independent, describing Townsend as ‘one of the global giants of social science and a leading campaigner for social justice’, referred to his ‘dedication to studying “very carefully the life of the poorest and most handicapped members of society”’, defining disability and co‐founding the Disability Alliance which he chaired for 25 years (Walker 2009b).

It is this that brings us to an aspect of Townsend’s life and contribution that has not so far been touched on in mainstream discussions of his life, but which nonetheless has great significance both for disabled people and disability policy, theory and action and which offers helpful insights to his role and position as both an academic and campaigner more generally. This was his relation to the new participatory politics of disability embodied in the development by disabled people of their own organisations, ideas, campaigns and international movement. This gives us a chance to see how this giant of Fabian politics and policy connects with the new social policy of social movements of welfare, health and social care service users.

One document brings together within its pages the very different traditions of these two political and campaigning developments. This is The fundamental principles of disability published in 1976 jointly by the Union of The Physically Impaired Against Segregation (UPIAS) and the Disability Alliance (UPIAS/Disability Alliance 1976). Careful attention should be paid to the nature and role of this document. Its title makes explicit the significance its authors attached to it. It is probably one of, if not the, most important statement in the development of the UK disabled people’s movement. While it is still readily available to be downloaded from the Disability Archive of the Centre for Disability Studies at Leeds University (www.leeds.ac.uk/disability-studies/archiveuk/.../fundamental%20principles), we cannot be sure how widely known or read it is. We may guess that few of the obituarists who wrote about Peter Townsend will be familiar with it. It is widely recognised, however, in the field of disability studies as a defining document in the development of disabled people’s collective action and articulation of the key ideas they were developing. Yet how many people are actually aware of and familiar with its unusual format and its particular claim to authenticity and reliability remains unclear.

The Fundamental principles is not, as might first be expected, simply a straightforward statement of the values and beliefs of members or representatives of the emerging disabled people’s movement. It is actually a dialogue or debate between members of a disabled people’s organisation, UPIAS, and of the Disability Alliance, an organisation which included both disabled and non‐disabled people. So, in essence, it is an exchange between one of the new organisations of disabled people and one that reflected the traditional model of being an organisation for disabled people – including some of them – but not controlled by them. Perhaps even more important, not only does the document record a formal discussion between the two organisations, but each has had the opportunity to read, finalise and agree this and then to offer additional commentaries of their own. So here we have that rare thing in history, a record that has been agreed and authenticated by the parties involved, where we know that how their arguments are presented, where there are differences and conflicts, we can take these to be accurately represented.

This offers a unique insight into contemporary thinking about disability, particularly disability in relation to poverty, from the different vantage points of these two organisations. What makes it even more significant and interesting is that these different vantage points reflect much broader competing perspectives. These are crucially that which is lodged in traditional Fabian approaches to social policy and campaigning and that emerging from the new self‐organisation and collectivity of disabled people within their own organisations. What makes this particularly relevant here is that the dominant voice for the Fabian approach is that of Peter Townsend, while the voice of disabled people includes key spokespersons and founders of the disabled people’s movement like Vic and Liz Finkelstein, Paul Hunt and Ken Davies.

Each of us may have our own reading of this document, so I cannot claim to offer an impartial and objective view of it. But what I find striking is the enormous gulf in understanding that emerges between the two approaches, which for simplicity’s sake can reasonably be described as those of Townsend, since his is the dominant voice of the Disability Alliance and the disabled people’s movement represented by UPIAS. While both perspectives can claim to be concerned with the rights and needs of disabled people, how they see these and how they seek to achieve them emerges as worlds apart. This document offers unique and key insights in understanding Townsend, his approach to campaigning and disabled people and the scale of the challenge to the traditional dominance of left of centre Fabianism that the disabled people’s movement and its self‐organisation represented.

The website of the Disability Alliance states that it was founded by Peter Townsend in 1974:

when representatives of a large number of organisations joined forces to protest at the failure of the Government and opposition to adopt programmes that would lead to a comprehensive income for disabled people. (http://www.disabilityalliance.org/peter.htm)

Disability Alliance is a national registered charity with the principal aim of relieving the poverty and improving the living standards of disabled people. Our eventual aim is to break the link between poverty and disability. (http://www.disabilityalliance.org/about.htm)

UPIAS, founded in 1972, has been described by disabled people as:

an important organisation in the development of the disabled people’s movement in the United Kingdom as it firmly placed ‘disability’ within a social context. … [It] became the first disability liberation group in the UK, and one of the first in the world. (http://www.gmcdp.com/UPIAS.html)

The establishment of both organisation can be linked to the collapse of the Disablement Income Group (DIG) in 1972. As Adam Lent stated in his discussion of British social movements: ‘the Disability Alliance – a new body under the leadership of Peter Townsend aimed to make up for DIG’s failings’ (Lent 2002, 107). The agreed aim of the meeting between the two organisations on the basis of their ‘prior agreement’ to a set of ‘fundamental principles’ identified by UPIAS was to explore how disabled people ‘could become more active in the disability field’ and consider a ‘long‐term programme of action’ to make that possible (UPIAS/Disability Alliance 1976, 3). These ‘fundamental principles’ were that:

disability is a situation, caused by social conditions, which requires for its elimination, (a) that no one aspect such as incomes, mobility or institutions is treated in isolation, (b) that disabled people should, with the advice and help of others, assume control over their own lives, and (c) that professionals, experts and others who seek to help must be committed to promoting such control by disabled people. (p. 3)

While both organisations said they had signed up to these principles, UPIAS was not convinced that the Disability Alliance and Peter Townsend actually did, seeing them as:

•	Pursuing the income issue in isolation – ‘it is only one aspect of [disabled people’s] oppression’. (p. 4)
•	Maintaining an approach with ‘a small number of [non‐disabled] experts’ having the central role and most disabled people left ‘largely passive’. (p. 4)
•	Seeking to educate the public through ‘expert’ information, with a ‘narrow concentration on parliamentary pressure’ (p. 4) rather than working for the ‘mass participation of disabled people’ which UPIAS saw as crucial.
•	Not making serious efforts to involve disabled people.

UPIAS saw the preoccupation of Townsend and the Disability Alliance with a comprehensive state income for disabled people, along the failed lines of DIG, as perpetuating their social and economic dependence. It regarded the Alliance’s reliance on a medically based model of assessing disability – what people ‘couldn’t do’, rather than a social model, providing the support they needed to live independently – as keeping control with social administrators and taking it from disabled people. UPIAS condemned ‘the willingness of the incomes ‘experts to use disabled people to give authority to their own social interests’ (p. 16).

When Townsend described the setting up of the Disability Alliance as ‘very much a spontaneous development (p. 4), the response of UPIAS was: ‘you set up a spontaneous ad hoc organisation, putting forward policies to the government in the name of disabled people without involving them’ (p. 14). On the issue of disabled people’s involvement, Townsend said that ‘one might wish that there may be a much heavier representation of organisations of the disabled within the Disability Alliance in the future’ (p. 6), explaining the present failure to do so as being ‘a problem of time and organisation’. The UPIAS view was that the Alliance relied on ‘organised groups of experts to speak for disabled people’, which increased their disempowerment (p. 6).

UPIAS was strongly critical of Townsend’s approach to the meeting, which had been agreed long in advance and was formal, when he spoke of giving an ‘off‐the‐cuff reaction’ to their fundamental principles (p. 4) and asked ‘why are you making such heavy weather’ of them? (p. 8). The gulf between him and UPIAS seemed to stretch even further when, for example, he said ‘I think I am speaking here for a very large number of disabled people’ (p. 4) or he justified the involvement of non‐disabled ‘experts’ rather than disabled people as ‘just to give dignity to an exchange of correspondence with the Prime Minister’ (p. 16).

In their commentary UPIAS made it clear that they saw Townsend as patronising and excluding, unable to understand or attach value to their ideas or principles. One point which UPIAS found particularly difficult to accept was Townsend’s assertion that it was not possible for him to say which was cause or effect – poverty or disability:

You must understand, a social scientist who is asked to make a declaration about cause and effect takes up a very complicated position about factors which are so associated as to make it difficult, in lay terms, to distinguish cause from effect. I have to make that point. (p. 8)

The UPIAS response was to say:

Imagine a lecturer going into a class to talk about sociology, starting by saying that he had not thought very much about the fundamental principles of sociology. (p. 12)

In his examination of British social movements Lent concluded:

The meeting was supposedly designed to see whether UPIAS could join the Alliance and whether Alliance members would be allowed to affiliate to UPIAS. In effect, however, it simply emphasized the irreconcilability of the old moderate approach and the new, self‐organised radicalism. (Lent 2002, 107–8)

To this we might add that it also highlighted the distance between traditional Fabian approaches to social policy and new participatory ones, where groups on the receiving end of social policy challenged the right of others to speak for them, developed their own collectivities, ideas and theories, rejecting traditional ‘expertise’ and emphasizing the expertise that came from direct or lived experience.

Townsend was a key modern Fabian thinker and activist. He drew a sharp line between the relative approach to poverty he spearheaded and traditional absolute and subsistence models. This distinction dominated discussions and developments about poverty from the 1970s. Mrs Thatcher rejected relative poverty as rooted in ideas of material equality, for which she said that there was little public or political support, and she was thus able to isolate and stifle opposition to her anti‐state welfare, pro‐market social policies. Yet academics since have highlighted that relative and subsistence poverty models are nothing like as different as advocates such as Townsend suggested (Alcock 1997, 71–2). Furthermore, when people with experience of poverty began to be involved in discussions about the concept of poverty, few of them seemed to support the relative model, emphasizing that it offered a poor basis for broad‐based campaigns in which they would be likely have any sense of ownership (Beresford et al. 1999).

Fabian social policy did not recover from Mrs Thatcher’s attacks, but instead largely shifted to the right as ‘welfare pluralism’ and the ‘third way’ (Beresford and Croft 1984; Giddens, 1998). Since then New Labour governments have been associated with increasing extremes of material inequality. People on benefits have continued to be stigmatized, with an increasing proportion of people on low incomes now in employment, although still dependent on state support. Poverty has long been an area of social policy dominated by experts without direct experience. We may wonder what direction anti‐poverty action and policy might have taken over these years if a rights‐based movement, the equivalent of the disabled people’s movement, had developed and been nurtured, to counter the traditional dominance of external ‘experts’.

Townsend’s involvement in the fundamental principles meeting offers a valuable but largely neglected insight into the limits of the kind of Fabian social policy and campaigning for which he was celebrated. With the benefit of hindsight we can now see what became of some of the arguments rehearsed at that contentious meeting in 1975.

The Disability Alliance did not become an effective alliance of disability organisations or the repository of organisations of disabled people achieving major disability reform. It did, on the other hand, become an important expert welfare rights organisation, with a majority of disabled people as trustees and Peter Townsend as its lifetime chair. Key changes in disability policy and in perceptions of disabled people, by both others and themselves, and the further achievement of their rights and new approaches to meeting their needs have all come about as a result of the development of the disabled people’s movement. Local and national organisations of disabled people, although still insecure and underfunded, have grown in scale, authority and influence. The social model of disability and the philosophy of independent living which were the basis for the 1975 meeting have been significantly incorporated in government policy. At the same time many disabled people are still reliant on disability benefits which are essentially based on a medicalised individual model of disability and a residual system of social care.

The traditional big organisations for disabled people still exert an undue influence and non‐disabled ‘experts’ continue to hold great power, but now many local organisations of disabled people have taken us some way to a mass politics of disability, including direct action through organisations like DAN, the Direct Action Network. There are also lessons here for the disabled people’s movement. These might include not over‐focusing on parliamentary approaches, but instead seeking to prioritise and cherish the large‐scale diverse involvement of disabled people, while recognising the ongoing challenges from traditional disability organisations, as they subtlely reinvent themselves. Meanwhile, we must hope that the architects of the disabled people’s movement will come to be remembered and celebrated on no less a scale than sociologists like Peter Townsend. Certainly, their pioneering efforts seem to offer a much more promising route map for progressive, inclusive and democratic social policy for the 21st century.